Fix You
by casforthewinchester
Summary: For eons, Castiel has worked tirelessly to earn the most coveted status among the angels of Heaven: that of an Archangel. With only one task left to complete, Castiel eagerly looks forward to his final charge of shaping Dean Winchester into a Guardian over Earth. Will he be able to transform the rugged hunter into a hero of ages? (UPDATE SCHEDULED FOR: postponed)
1. Prologue

Fix You

_Every day I think I'm going more and more insane from everything that's been going on. I'm used to weird frigging stuff, but we can't find anything to explain what's been happening. The headaches, the loud random noises, the nausea, the weird dreams… None of it makes any sense. Sammy and I have looked literally everywhere and we can't find a damn thing to explain any of it. There's nothing in the Journal, Ellen and Jo have no frigging clue—they say they've never seen anything like this before. Even Ash has got no idea._

_Another weird thing: has the moon always been this bright?_

Prologue

The walls were blank, white-washed surfaces reminiscent of such a nondescript nature that they almost appeared to fade away as time passed. Everything from the marble-tiled floor to the gleaming aluminum chairs screamed of an anal-retentive cleanliness. Coupled with a screaming sort of silence, the place felt more like a morgue than an office.

Castiel itched to escape. He felt imprisoned by the dauntingly cool seat beneath him and the sterilized atmosphere around him. Michael's office was quite possibly his least favorite room to be in, and he was forced there every few days to report to his equally sanitized boss.

However, today, none of that much mattered. There were far more pressing matters than the oppressive lack of decor around him: such things as could not be damped by something so trivial. In fact, Castiel found himself so excited that he could hardly sit in his characteristically militaristic pose. The only thing keeping him still was the gravity of what lay before him, and how vital professionalism was in the process.

It didn't help that Michael was taking his time shuffling through the Greek city of papers on his desk. Castiel had to physically restrain himself so that he wouldn't wiggle around in his seat in excitement while he waited. After what seemed like days (which it might well have been considering the subjective nature of time in Heaven), Michael pulled a stack of documents together and dropped them in front of the anxious angel.

"Looks like you have everything here," Michael noted, collapsing his fingers upon one another on the desk. "That should include affirmations for all of your previous tasks and a summary of your final objectives in this case."

Rifling through the papers, Castiel only half-listened while Michael ranted about the Finale of his training. For eons Castiel had worked toward this, the single goal that all angels under Heaven moved toward. All of the hours spent in preparation for the Finale, his last and greatest triumph, were about to come to fruition. He'd watched so many of his brothers emerge victorious before him, and now he finally had his chance to bask in the same glow.

To him, it didn't matter who he was assigned for the Guardianship. No one on earth could be harder to coerce into the position than Zachariah's charge, or take as long to gather as Metatron's. From the look of the papers, it seemed as though he'd only be dealing with a single human. Not even bothering to look at the name, Castiel directed his attention back at his eldest brother. Michael was just finishing with a very bland congratulations and run-through of Castiel's previous qualifications.

"—seems that everything is finally coming together, Castiel," he finished with Michael's impressively fake smile. "Are you ready to talk about your charge?"

Castiel had been waiting since the conception of dirt to receive this particular test from Heaven. "Of course."

"Excellent," Michael responded without removing his plastered-on grin. "Let's get right to it then. If you would retrieve the document containing your Guardian charge."

Through the heap of papers containing his entire life—it was uncomfortable this his existence boiled down to a single folder of spreadsheets and notes—Castiel pulled out a pale blue file embellished with the title: _Guardian Class 07AB9: Classified_.

"The Guardian Counsel spent a substantial amount of time considering who they would assign to you, Castiel. As you know, you are a very…special candidate for the position of Archangel," Michael said, choosing his words as carefully as God chose his prophets. "What with the means by which you have completed some of your previous tests. The Four think that this particular human will make a wonderful Guardian and an interesting challenge."

"What will his center be?" Castiel asked.

Nearly since he'd been introduced into the notion of candidacy, Castiel wondered what sort of Guardian his would be. Something along the lines of Wisdom or Creativity, he hoped.

"We'll go over that in a moment," Michael assured Castiel, pulling the blue sheet up to eye-level.

He leafed through the packet briefly, as though he would have forgotten something within the past few minutes. Still, in all his agitation, all of his impatience, Castiel sat obediently and perfectly still. Barely even daring to breathe incorrectly, Castiel waited and listened while Michael reviewed his Guardian charge.

"Dean Winchester will certainly be a fitting charge for you, Castiel," he said cryptically. "Now, let's go over the basics of your mission here.

"As with everything, Castiel, your Guardian case is very unique. To begin with, you aren't to know the center of your charge. Part of your mission includes discovering what that muse might be, so that is quite unusual."

Castiel nodded, though inside his excitement gave way to something more akin to angst. He'd never heard of an angel not knowing the center of their Guardian before. In all of history, The Guardian's center was generally a selling-point an angel utilized to prepare and motivate his future superhuman. Castiel would have to rethink his strategy…But he refused to be disheartened.

Ever since completing his first task, oddities seemed to follow Castiel's career wherever he want. There was no reason why he should be any less successful here, or why he should lose his head over something so trivial.

"There's just one final thing I need to tell you before I allow you to begin preparing your human for bonding," Michael continued blandly. "You will be working alongside another angel."

Still no need for panic. "Who?"

"Gabriel."

Castiel nearly lost it there. Going absolutely rigid in his seat, Castiel felt dread seep through his veins like venom from a snake.

Gabriel was Michael's youngest immediate brother: that is, the last member of his wing order. He'd been an Archangel nearly as long as Michael had, but always managed to find trouble and lose his status. If Castiel was the Heavenly misfit, Gabriel was an outright pariah. Most of the angels avoided him whenever possible to circumvent being caught in the crosshairs of his mischief. Among those in Heaven, he'd earned the nickname "The Trickster". No really liked him and no one respected him at all.

"Gabriel?" Castiel asked, forcing his voice into an unconcerned neutrality. "Didn't he already have a Guardian?"

"I suppose it wouldn't surprise you to hear that his charge has Fallen," Michael stated.

"Azazel has Fallen?" Castiel asked, feigning surprise.

"He has," Michael confirmed. "The Counsel has assigned him the other Winchester brother, Samuel."

Something in Castiel's mind illuminated his memory at that name. Why he hadn't realized it before eluded him—perhaps because he was so used to hearing their names in conjunction with one another—but suddenly he recognized what he was going to be involved in.

In all of Heaven, Hell, and Earth, the Winchester brothers were the two most coveted humans of modern history. Their profound bond made them formidable hunters unrivaled among men. Having them chosen as Guardians was not only fitting, but almost necessary in order to keep them from the clutches of Lucifer and his demons where they would provide nerve-wracking tension. Perhaps the boys' prestige would temper Gabriel enough to make him bearable to work with.

Castiel didn't hold his breath.

"The Winchester brothers will be good additions to the Guardians," Castiel noted, suddenly itching to get out of Michael's office.

"Yes they will. I think that's all of the information I have for you for now," Michael noted with a relieving air of finality in his voice. "If you have any questions during your process, report back to the Counsel. Otherwise, good luck and may God give speed to your wings."

"Yes sir," Castiel replied, bowing himself out of the room laden with the files of his accomplishments.

Bolting from the room, Castiel flew from Michael's office to his favorite haunt: the Garden. Tended by the Archangel Joshua, the Garden provided privacy and peace when Castiel wanted to be alone. Joshua was a kind angel, with a deceivingly homely facade. Succeeding his Archangel coronation, Joshua had returned to the Garden he so loved despite the tradition for becoming commander of one of the Heavenly garrisons. To compensate, Joshua had become the coordinator between Heaven and God. If one wished to speak with the Father, Joshua interceded as translator. Otherwise, he quietly cared for the flora and fauna within the Garden and stayed out of Heavenly affairs.

Today, because Castiel found himself in an exceptionally good mood, he came upon the Garden in the form of a vibrant, flourishing tropical landscape. Finding a particularly soft patch of moss under a Durian tree, Castiel seated himself and began to sift through Dean Winchester's file.

The Guardians had obviously spent an impressive amount of time crafting the profile. Due to his dual fame and infamy, Dean was already fairly well-known to Castiel. For the time being, he decided to entertain himself with trying to figure out what Dean's center might be.

His first instinct was loyalty. Dean stayed true to his family above anything else: they were the center of his moral compass. Unfortunately, a Guardian of loyalty already existed, and he was Anna's charge.

So, loyalty was out. Courage was another likely candidate considering the number of times he willingly walked out into harm's way, but that couldn't be the case either since Mer—

"Having fun, little bro?" a snide voice called from directly to Castiel's right.

Starting a bit in his surprise, Castiel looked up from his musings to find Gabriel leaning casually against a long-dead tree stump with a smirk plastered on his face.

"I hear we're going to be seeing a lot of each other these days," he continued when Castiel said nothing in response. "I suppose we'll have to learn how to play nice."

"Gabriel, I've worked far too long and far too hard to have my status taken away by your games," Castiel said heatedly, standing up so he could look his brother straight in the eyes.

Throwing his hands up in mock surrender, Gabriel widened his sneer.

"I'm not planning on ruining your little ceremony, okay?" he assured the younger angel. "It'd be a waste of my time anyway. Do you know how many times I've been through this? You should be happy to have a veteran like me around to guide you along."

"What made your charge fall?" Castiel asked, gathering up his papers and preparing to get away from Gabriel as soon as he could.

"Azazel? Toasted some woman on a ceiling," Gabriel shrugged, returning to his previous position.

Castiel froze. "He isn't the one who killed the Winchester's mother?"

"The very same," Gabriel replied without the slightest bit of remorse. "Ironic, isn't it?"

Castiel felt physically ill. The idea that Gabriel spoke so nonchalantly of the tragic event that had held heaven on its edge for nearly five years sickened him to his stomach. How Gabriel had ever managed to become an Archangel in first place was completely beyond Castiel.

"How can you be so careless about them?" Castiel demanded, daring to look into Gabriel's golden eyes. "We are meant to protect them, to guide them."

"Trust me, when you've seen and heard as much of them as I have, you begin to understand that they're not all they're cracked up to be," Gabriel replied cynically.

"Then why try?"

Gabriel didn't seem to have an answer. He simply shrugged and began to pick at a spot underneath the nail on his left index finger, as though he'd grown bored with Castiel. Completely dumbfounded and frustrated at this point, Castiel gathered his belongings gave the most noncommittal bow to his elder he'd ever attempted.

"I need to prepare for bonding," Castiel muttered, needing an excuse to leave his normally safe haven and be away from Gabriel.

Walking swiftly, Castiel hastened away from the tree stump and from the other angel as quickly as he could. He didn't even care that he was being rude, or that he could have probably tried harder to befriend the angel he'd be spending the next several years with. At the moment, nothing mattered other than the horrible images of carnage racing through Castiel's mind: the fire, the burning of human flesh, the panicked look on John's face as he watched his wife burst into flames…

It was too much for Castiel to handle. The task before him now seemed less like a final stepping stone and more like a boulder he would have to hurdle over with a pack of rabid Hellhounds chasing after him. Perhaps the Guardianship wouldn't be as easy as he'd previously expected it to be.

In spite of his apprehension, an image crystalized in his eyes beyond the flames of death ever consuming Mary Winchester. A black Chevy Impala, where Dean would be listening to ACDC while Sam checked them out of the last crappy hotel they'd found to stay in. His agitation eased, and he found that breathing was less laborious as he focused on that single image.

Nothing mattered other than achieving this final leg of the marathon he'd been running for so long. Gabriel's attitude was something Castiel would learn to work around. Dean Winchester was his Finale, and God willing, as Castiel flew away from the Garden and into the ethereal expanse of Heaven, he swore that he was going to finish with a bang. No more mistakes, no more accidents, no more screw-ups on his part. He would make Dean Winchester a Guardian.

Or he would be dragged through Hell by the wings trying.


	2. Episode 1:The Cavern of His Subconscious

Sam yanked the bottle of pain killers out of Dean's hand.

"Your liver's already about three years away from failing," he said, tossing it across the motel room.

"There's no going back now. Might as well finish it off," Dean grumbled, massaging his temples. "Besides, you aren't doing any better than I am. How doped up are you? Half a bottle's worth?"

"I can because I'm not hell-bent on drinking myself to death," Sam argued, sinking back onto the other bed.

Every time Sam sat on something soft and let his mind wander to things other than hunting, it was like air being let out of a balloon. Instantly deflating, he leaned against the bed post and closed his eyes, succumbing to the screaming migraine he'd been experiencing for the past several weeks.

The brothers were obviously used to the supernatural. For nearly their entire lives they'd been trained to hunt down and kill the creepy-crawlies that lurked in the very assholes of the earth. Still, whenever things actually started happening _to_ them instead of just _around_ them they both got seriously freaked out. Not to mention that their splitting headaches, nausea, strange dreams, and loud noises that no one else seemed to hear kept them from work.

"Can't die quite yet," Dean replied in a forcedly neutral tone. "Still got this case we're working on."

Sam looked over at his brother, noting the winkle in his brow as he fought against the same paralyzing pains and noises that were bothering Sam. More than anything else, the thing that frightened Sam the most was how incapacitated Dean was by the symptoms. This was the brother who'd managed to slay an entire nest of vamps practically on his own with a punctured lung and three broken ribs—without so much as a tear. Now, he could barely speak and his eyes were closed so tightly they might as well have been super-glued shut.

Nearly two weeks ago the first of the symptoms began, almost out of the blue. The weird dreams came first, but only started worrying the boys when they realized that they were having similar visions. Then, the loud, impossibly high-pitched noises that only dolphins should have been able to differentiate started to play every so often in the backs of their minds. Perhaps as a result of these two things, perhaps from an entirely different cause, a constant migraine and nausea invaded their bodies.

Two full meals had already made a round-trip journey from Sam's mouth to his stomach just that day. He knew Dean wasn't keeping anything down either because his brother looked considerably thinner than he had last week. Dean would never let Sam know he was sick, but he knew.

Everything was going to hell. The case they were working had stagnated because neither of them could muster enough energy to research or interview for more than an hour or so. They couldn't admit themselves to the local hospital because "hearing voices" and "seeing things" would definitely land them in the mental wing.

"We're screwed, aren't we?" Dean mumbled from the other side of a very long tunnel, as it seemed to Sam.

"Seriously, dude," Sam agreed. Even his own voice seemed strangely disembodied, as though a stranger had stolen his vocal cords.

"I just want to figure out what the hell is wrong with us," Dean growled.

Beside Sam, though it seemed like the noise reached him from another dimension, the bed creaked and footfalls echoed like drum beats through his ears. The sound of a rushing waterfall—or was it the bathroom sink—resounded in his brain.

"Jo and Ellen don't have any idea what's happening to us," Sam replied, recalling the fruitless conversation he'd had with their hunting partners.

_…"There's nothing in your dad's journal?"Ellen asked with that stern, motherly look of hers._

_"Nothing that we can find," Dean replied, tossing the tattered book across the sleek, polished surface of the bar._

_"I've had Jo look into it. We just can't find anything that would explain everything that's going on, other than you two just being bat-shit insane," the elder woman replied, furrowing her brow. "I know you boys aren't crazy. Maybe it's just stress?"_

_"Stress causing the exact same symptoms, Ellen?" Dean replied skeptically._

_"That does sound pretty strange. I guess I just want to know you'll be alright," Ellen said agreeably…_

"Did they ask Ash?" Sam answered, the words somewhat muffled by the splashing of water in the sink.

Dean groaned audibly, and Sam opened his eyes just in time to watch his brother slump against the counter. The contours of his face squished together as though he'd just eaten a popsicle whole, and the words that came out of his mouth were incredibly forced.

"Ash is on a…thing…"

"Noise?" Sam asked, although he already knew from the whiteness of Dean's knuckles what the answer would be.

"I feel like it keeps getting frigging higher," he growled through his teeth, stumbling back across the room and collapsing back onto the bed.

Agreeing quietly, Sam slammed his eyes shut again because he knew that if Dean was having an episode, that unbearable whistling would hunt his ears down as well and put him in an unreachable amount of pain. If he could fall asleep fast enough, maybe he could outfox the sound.

Exhaustion from days of restless four-hour, interrupted naps consumed Sam, and within minutes he was hurtling through the deep blackness into the sector of his mind reserved for dreaming. To his displeasure, however, the dream was another practically hallucinogenic vision like the others he'd been experiencing night after night. Part of him almost preferred to suffer the effects of sleep deprivation than delve into this horrifying world where nothing made sense. Anything was better than the whistling, though, and he'd found that as long as he was asleep the noise couldn't penetrate his mind.

Tonight, as it did every night, the structure of waking life gave way to distorted, disfigured images of creatures that weren't quite human roaming around a cave-like hallway. Vacant, black sockets gaped open wide where eyes should have been, threatening to swallow Sam whole. No teeth tainted the holes that were their mouths. It was like walking straight into _The Scream_, except that everything seemed so real and life-like.

For the moment, Sam couldn't even remember that the melting forms of people haunting around him weren't real, and that everything he saw was nothing more than the product of his own mind. Here, everything consumed his attention. Here, everything was as real as Dean's alcohol abuse. Here, they were the hunters and Sam was the monster.

Odd though it may have been, whenever Sam entered the dream world, he felt the need to hide from everything. Even if a butterfly flew by (although, who was he kidding. He'd see butterflies in hell before they came anywhere near this God-forsaken place), he flinched as though a belt had been brandished at his face and slunk into the darkest corner he could find.

Off in the distance, Sam would make out the faint screaming pleas of tortured souls. Each note pierced the thin veil of his heart with such intensity, he was close to joining the wailing choir. Thankfully, the ghostly figures paid him no attention. They simply wandered around him as though they were unaware of their very existence.

His visions were always the same: a collection of melting, lost individuals with gaping sockets in place of eyes and wide, gaping mouths. None of them interacted with Sam as they haunted trough the seemingly endless dark cavern. Frankly it was more unnerving for the figures to ignore him because they were at once frightening yet not threatening. He felt intimidated by them but he couldn't justify attacking any of them.

The environment always seemed to the changing as well, which disoriented him constantly. It was like the cave walls and protrusions were made out of a semi-solid gas that formed, dissolved and reformed every few seconds.

"Kind of a creepy atmosphere if you ask me," a snide, nasally voice called from behind Sam.

Sam normally didn't scare very easily—an after-effect of his day job. However, since he'd been coming to this dream-like realm for weeks on end and none of the specters had so much as acknowledged his existence, he practically jumped out of his skin.

Spinning on his heel, he saw what appeared to be an ordinary man standing about two yards away from him. He was average in almost every way, and this alarmed Sam more than anything else. He wore a plain pair of jeans with boots and an army-green jacket pulled over a nondescript black T-shirt. The light brown sweep of his hair and goatee embellished a long, angular face with delicate features. The only defining aspect was his eyes, which pierced like whiskey-toned torches through the muddled, vaporous darkness.

When Sam didn't say anything in response, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and gazed nonchalantly at the haunting surroundings.

"I gotta say, this is probably one of the most screwed-up subconsciouses I've ever seen," the man remarked lazily. "Talk about your nine levels of crazy."

"Who the hell are you?" Sam asked, voice strained, hand twitching at the knife he kept at his hip.

"Relax," the man said, shaking his head with a raised eyebrow. "I'm not here to do anything to you."

The stranger eyed the sheath at Sam's belt—not with hesitance as Sam would have expected, but with something close to annoyance.

"Sorry if I don't immediately believe you," Sam retorted.

He was becoming more and more uneasy as time went on, but found that he was too interested in the foreigner to move or run. Something also told him that he probably wouldn't get very far if he tried.

"Look, I'm not here to make any of this worse than it already is. That'd be hard anyway considering how seriously screwed up this place is," the stranger replied. "Would it make you feel any better if I explained some of this to you? You're so tense it's making me a little uncomfortable."

"That would probably be a good idea," Same agreed, remaining in his rigid position.

"My name is Gabriel, and this might be hard for you to wrap your head around, but I'm actually an angel."

"An angel?" Sam replied, attempting to remain skeptical while his heart skipped several beats in excitement. "Like, _the _angel Gabriel? From the Bible? Prove it."

"What do you want me to do, unfurl my wings?" Gabriel scoffed. "I'm not a showboat. I'm here to explain a few things to you before you wake up. Now will you let me do my job?"

After an entire lifetime spent hunting down every last God-forsaken creature that crossed his path, willingly or unwillingly, Sam found solace in prayer and faith. If so much evil existed in the world, then reasonably he thought that an equal amount of good must also reside somewhere in the universe. The fact that the person before him could be an angel wasn't what had Sam on edge; it was the fact that he'd been lied to so often by demons he felt he couldn't necessarily trust everything anyone said. Especially in this ethereal world.

"Alright, say you are the angel Gabriel. If you were an angel, you'd be able to tell me what the hell has been happening to me and my brother for the past few weeks," Sam told him decisively.

"That's what I'm here for. If you stopped being paranoid for more than two seconds, maybe we'd actually get that accomplished," Gabriel replied.

Relaxing just enough to pull himself up to his full height, Sam folded his arms across his chest and nodded at Gabriel to continue.

"Thank you," the light-haired man said. "So, it's a lot to explain all at once so I'm just going to brush on the details. Essentially, you and Dean have both been undergoing a process we in Heaven call the Preparation. Basically, we're trying to get you two knuckleheads in an open enough state for us to make a bond with you."

Sam felt his heart flutter in exhilaration, but he didn't completely relinquish his skepticism yet.

"So you're telling me that we've been sick to the point where we can't even work a case, because heaven wants us to do something?" he clarified.

"Yeah, pretty much," Gabriel shrugged, taking several steps towards Sam, who didn't back away or stiffen this time. "You guys are up for something pretty damn important. I'm the angel who's been assigned to help you not totally screw it up."

In the back of Sam's mind, past his natural suspicion and sense of constant unrest, he felt that Gabriel's story made sense. Past experience had already proven that he and his brother were indispensible with a price on their heads from hell. Why wouldn't heaven want to recruit two young, capable hunters?

"So the headaches?"

"Us trying to probe around in your head to get to know you pretty well before the first date," Gabriel answered.

"The nausea?"

"Humans aren't exactly equipped to have angels sifting through them 24/7."

"The whistling?"

"Hey, it's not our fault that you can't understand our natural language," Gabriel said, throwing his hands up in mock defense.

"What about this place?" Sam inquired, gesturing around at the wraithlike surroundings.

"Now that's the most interesting question you've asked me so far," Gabriel said, this time with a sly smirk playing his thin, almost feminine lips. "This right here is the ship wreck that is your subconscious."

"We're in my mind?" Sam asked, now even more intimidated by his environment.

"And Bingo was his name-o. These visions you've been having are me trying to make sense of all of those emotions and thoughts you like to bury beneath that façade of brotherly commitment you present out there," he gestured vaguely at where the cave walls seemed to be, far off in the unseen distance, "to everyone else."

All of a sudden, Sam found that his chest seemed constricted and his heart picked up its rhythmic pace.

"This is my head?" he breathed, directing his attention back at the swirling mass of infinite cavern and wandering figures.

"Pretty jacked up in here, huh?" Gabriel agreed, bringing himself forward to stand at Sam's side. "You know all of these weird looking screams are every thought, memory, and emotion you've managed to bury deep in that endless black soul of yours."

"So why don't they attack me?" Sam wondered; because knowing the sorts of existential embodiments that dwelt down here, they'd probably want to slaughter anything that came near them.

"They don't even know you exist," Gabriel answered with a small cynical snort. "They're just things, Sam. They exist outside of you. Here, let me show you."

As one of the specters glided past the two of them, the angel lunged forward and swept his hand directly at its lifeless grey-tinged face. Like wind through a cloud of smoke, his palm and fingers passed through the wraith; and forced the wrinkled folds of its strained skin to dissipate, shimmer in mid-air for a fraction of a second, and coagulate again. After recollecting itself, the figure continued on its way as though Gabriel wasn't even there.

"See?" he pointed out wryly, brushing his hand on his jeans even though no visible residue could be seen there. "So, before I get out of this literal hell hole, there's one more thing I have to do with you."

Reaching into the pocket of his jeans, Gabriel rummaged around for a moment in search of something. From inside the pocket, Sam thought he heard the hollow sounds of banging and clashing as though he were searching from the inside of a well. Finally, he pulled out a thin, corked vial hung on a silver chain. Made from glass, the vial contained a small, powdery substance that looked almost like gold dust. Wrapped around the outside of the container was a pair of wings to match the powder on the inside. Sam found that he couldn't take his eyes off of it.

"This is something we call Link Powder. Whenever you have it with you, as long as the bottle is touching some part of your skin, I'll know where you are. You can also give me a call and I'll be able to hear you," Gabriel explained, holding out the little bottle for Sam to take.

When Sam grasped it, he found that the contents exuded its own warmth: just enough to feel like a small light in his fist. In addition to the heat, the necklace did something extremely strange to him the moment it made contact with his skin. All of a sudden, he felt like another form of energy was rushing through his body, separate from his blood. It reminded him faintly of adrenaline, but stronger, more persistent, and without affecting his pulse. In the back of his mind, he also sensed a faint sort of buzzing sensation like static from a radio.

"Holy shit," he gasped, observing so much power in his body he felt as if he could punch through a brick wall.

"It'll probably take you a while before you learn how to use it properly," Gabriel said.

"Wait a minute. How am I going to bring this out there," Sam gestured at the deep black abyss, "if you gave it to me in here?"

Gabriel simply snorted again in reply, rolling up his sleeves and allowing a cocky smirk to spread across his lips.

"I'm an angel, Private Pinhead. I can do whatever the hell I want."

Then he snapped his fingers, and he was gone; and Sam was left alone with nothing but the swirling, overbearing darkness weighing down on him.


	3. Episode 2: His Mind is a Morgue

Episode 2: His Mind is a Morgue

Dean has never found a place on earth he disliked more than this creepy place he went in his dreams. It was white: so blindingly white it usually took him a few minutes to be able to make out shapes amongst the wave of light rushing at him. Even when he could make out the forms of counters, doors, walls, a ceiling, everything was that same monotonous color. It was like being in an overly sterilized quarantined zone.

The light illuminating every corner of the place didn't seem to come from any specific sources, and it was eerily silent in there. His footfalls didn't even echo. It was deafening, how absolutely quiet it was. Quiet and white. Like milk. Deadly milk.

It looked like some sort of futuristic hospital, sans doctors and patients. As far as Dean knew, he was the only one who ever seemed to visit this place. For the weeks he'd been coming here in his dreams and visions, he'd never seen another soul. Unlike Sam, he'd never even seen any ghastly figures wandering the halls. It was a silence and solitude he'd never experienced before in his life. It really creeped him out.

Dean never really had much to do in the place of his visions. The hallways and rooms seemed to twist and turn into oblivion, never ending but uniform. Although there seemed to be an infinite number of rooms in the place, they were all identical; pristine copies of the morgue from his favorite TV show, Doctor Sexy. The rooms themselves were as nondescript as everything else there, all but what lay inside the morgues.

On his very first night spent in the morgue, he'd curiously swept one of the morgue rooms to see if there was anything of significance hidden within it. He'd expected to find nothing but the same emptiness, but what he saw was infinitely more disturbing. For some reason, it was also strangely addicting.

He decided to open one of the morgue drawers again. He never knew exactly why he had an urge to look at the horrifying contents of the drawers; he got enough of that when he was awake. It was like some strange, masochistic urge within him drew him to what lay inside the containers where dead bodies should have been. What was in there was much worse than a dead body, though.

Walking as if on air into the angular chamber, Dean wandered over to the rows of cabinets on the opposite wall. In a small white box where the names of the deceased were usually written was a random collection of numbers. Countless times he'd try to make sense of the algebraic jumble, but Sam had always been the numbers whiz, not him. Reaching out, Dean took a deep breath and yanked the drawer open.

It was like a bomb went off. Screaming, as though from a million tortured souls, exploded from inside the container. If pure agony were a sound, it would have been the cacophony erupting from inside the drawer. As the shrieking continued, charred, grotesque, decaying, clawed hands and faces stretched out of the box, groping towards him. They were like demons crawling from the very fiery pits of hell. When he gazed down into the depths of the drawer, there was a ceaseless flow of hands and arms and faces and bodies writhed before him.

The stench blasting out of the drawer was also worse than any formaldehyde he'd ever smelled, and he'd been in his fair share of morgues before. Still, he couldn't make himself look away. It was like witnessing a car accident—you couldn't just turn your attention to something else.

There was also something strangely familiar about the contents of the drawers. Every time he looked at howling creatures inside of them, he couldn't help but feel like he'd seen all of them before. Of course, they didn't look like any demons he'd ever seen, or even any of the other bastards he'd ganked during his time as a hunter. Ash didn't even have a clue what they might be, and he knew more about monsters than anyone Dean had ever met.

Dean had no idea how long he stood there, letting the desolate cries of the creatures pound against his eardrums. After a while, the sound almost became soothing to him in the way that the body eventually relaxes when you're drowning. Peaceful suffering.

Sometimes Dean would spend what in the waking world would have been hours staring into the depths of the misery that the drawers held. Each held a similarly disturbing collection of mutilated figures attempting to escape, ever struggling against their metal cage. Today, for some odd reason, Dean found that he wasn't really in the mood for watching a bunch of random monsters scream themselves to death.

With more force then he'd expected would be necessary, he slammed the door shut. Behind the metal, he heard the sound of a latch locking itself like an automatic safe. Somehow, the tangible silence in the room seemed to muffle the screams and slam that should have echoed in the empty space; as if the vibrations were traveling through water.

He turned and left the morgue without looking back, allowing his mind to wander past the hauntingly blank walls around him. Since the splitting headaches kept him from thinking when he was awake (though, who was he kidding, Sam was the brains of the operation), he tried to figure stuff out in this hauntingly quiet place.

However creepy the place was, it was also more peaceful than anywhere he'd been before. If he kept the drawers shut, there were no sounds to disturb his thoughts. Considering the difficulty of the case he and his brother had been working lately, he needed all of the thinking time he could get in this dream world. If they didn't figure out what was going on with the case soon, they'd lose it to some other half-assed hunters, and Dean couldn't stomach the idea of being outdone by someone else. They were the frigging Winchesters, for crying out loud.

Suddenly, all of the lights, wherever they came from, seemed to go out at once. Instincts kicking in, Dean dove in the direction of one of the morgue rooms and slid with a bang into one of the walls. For a moment, he swore he'd gone temporarily blind—because as silent and white the place had been before, it was now pitch black. Without his eyes, Dean knew that it would be suicide to try to get up and walk around. Besides, he was more than a little freaked. This place had been the exact same for weeks on end and now some unknown entity had thrown him into a world of darkness.

Due to the place's ability to absorb all sound, Dean also couldn't hear if anything was approaching. He felt more helpless than he could remember feeling since he was a child, and his family was still unbroken. Since he never brought any weapons to this world with him, he could do nothing but tense up and wait for whatever it was to come for him. He would sure as hell put up a fight when it did.

All at once, the lights came back, but only half so as though they were coming from broken light fixtures. Random sparks were jumping from miscellaneous surfaces around him. After a quick once-over, he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary in the corners of the morgue room, so he got shakily to his feet.

"Hello, Dean," a rough, gravelly voice said from somewhere beside him.

Dean snapped his neck around so hard, he swore he felt one of his vertebrae pop. Standing in the doorway was one of the weirdest people Dean had ever seen. Or, at least, he looked like a person. He had black flyaway hair, blue eyes and a tie to match, and…a trench coat of all things. He didn't look particularly dangerous. But then again, a lot of things he and Sam hadn't looked very threatening at first glance. Dean certainly wasn't stupid enough to let his guard down, even if this guy did look like a harmless puppy.

"Who the hell are you?" Dean asked, plastering himself against the wall.

The man tilted his head to the side, and the smallest of self-assured smiles flitted across his lips.

"I am an Angel of the Lord," he replied calmly, taking a few steps closer to Dean.

Dean couldn't help but let out a snort of disbelief.

"No really," he snapped, returning to attack-mode. "Who the hell are you?"

The man's smile faded slightly and he looked profoundly confused.

"I am an Angel of the Lord," he repeated. "My name is Castiel."

"I don't believe in angels," Dean retaliated, relaxing slightly and folding his arms across his chest. "Those are stories for kids. Who are you really? Are you some figment of my imagination?"

"Of course not," the man refuted, decreasing the distance between them even further. "I have been sent from Heaven to raise you from perdition. The life that you lead right now is only a shadow of what Heaven has in store for you, Dean."

This time, Dean burst out into outright laughter. Ignoring the completely lost expression on the other man's face, Dean walked right up to Castiel and stared at him straight in the eyes. At this point, he was pretty convinced that he was just some sort of concoction of Dean's subconscious and that there really wasn't a reason to be afraid of him.

"You're telling me that heaven sent some cute-cheeked little cherub down here to tell me that they want to own my ass?" he chuckled. "You're pulling my leg."

"I promise that my hands are nowhere near your limbs," Castiel said quite seriously.

"Look, I know you're just another thing this hell-hole's brought up to make me completely frigging miserable. I'm not going to talk to a figment of my imagination," Dean said, brushing past Castiel into the hallway where maybe he could get away from all the crazy shit for a while.

Not three steps out the door, Dean nearly ran into the man when he materialized out of thin air in front of him.

"I don't have much time," Castiel explained. "I need to explain a few things to you before I go."

Exasperated, Dean sighed and consented to listen to whatever this guy, image, thing, had to say to him. There was no point in arguing with his own mind, and he didn't have the energy or the willpower to fight with him.

"Alright, whatever," he said, waving his hand for the man to continue.

The same slightly egotistical smile spread across his face, and relief relaxed his shoulders. He seemed almost to deflate with reprieve.

"Excellent," he said in a much happier tone. "I will make this a very quick explanation. We will have much more time to talk later. For now, the important details. Your visions are, as you have already guessed, manifestations of your mind. Specifically, the section of your subconscious where you manage to bury your memories and feelings when you want them to disappear."

"So this is my emotional graveyard?" Dean asked, trying with all his might not to sound as cynical as he felt.

"Precisely," Castiel nodded, sounding excited. "I have been sending you here because I needed you to enter into this part of your mind so that I can understand you more completely."

"And all the other shit I've been going through?" Dean questioned in spite of himself. "The dizziness, the vomiting, the migraines that would make a normal man cry?"

"We have been preparing you and Samuel for our arrival. The physical symptoms are your bodies getting used to the vastness of our power," the man nodded.

"The whistling that practically drove me insane?"

"I must admit that my natural language may not be the most pleasant to human ears," the man consented.

Castiel proceeded to reach into the pocket of his trench coat and pull out a small glass vial on a chain. It was filled with what looked to Dean like gleaming black powder, though in grains so tiny it looked almost like a very thick liquid. Wrapped around the vial was a pair of metallic wings identical to the color of the powder inside.

"This is a small sample of the powder that coats my wings. If it is in any way in contact with your skin, a link will form between us. We will be able to communicate over any distance and I will know your exact location," Castiel said with a touch of pride

He handed the vial very gingerly to Dean. Instantly, Dean felt like he'd been electrocuted as a shock ran from where his fingers touched the glass through the rest of his body. At first, it hurt like a mother, and Dean nearly cried out in pain. However, after a few minutes, the pain subsided and Dean was left with little more than a tingling sensation emanating from the vial.

"Jesus, that's strong," Dean grumbled, stuffing the vial into his pocket.

"Very," Castiel agreed. "I have to go, Dean. Your mind can't tolerate my presence for much longer. You can expect me to introduce myself in person very soon."

Before Dean could react, there was a whooshing sound, and Castiel disappeared from sight. Remaining skeptical, Dean shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair, wondering what the hell the world had come to. Yesterday, life had been so simple; gank the demon, save a few people, make sure Sam didn't go off the deep end. Now his mind was creating angels and screaming people in morgue cabinets.

First thing when he woke up, Dean was downing whatever he could get his hands on.


End file.
